Can You Access Your Own Cash Register Data?

jeronimo989 writes "A customer of mine has a small shop and asked me to look for an electronic cash register. One of the requirements is to retrieve the sales data from the cash register in some accessible format so he can import it in the software of his choice (which happens to be OpenOffice), either by downloading the data on a Flash card, connecting a laptop via USB, or even via a direct modem connection. As far as the cash register itself is concerned, he doesn't need anything too fancy; any 'entry level' machine for small businesses is probably OK (as long as it keeps an electronic journal, of course). Which options do we have? Are there cash register manufacturers out there that allow accessing the sales data directly in an open format? Does anyone here have experience with setting up a link between a cash register and PC, preferably using free/open source solutions?"

It really doesn't work this way...

... modern cash registers simply output on a serial or USB port all the transaction data entered, and receive informations on goods for PLUs (Price Look-Ups): when a barcode on a product is scanned, the cash register "asks" to a server the corresponding price and description to be printed on your receipt, etc. Most cash registers are actually (at least here in Italy, and in a reasonably sized shop) just a specialized keyboard/screen/cash drawer connected to a PC, which in turn sits on a network: it's all part of a turn-key system, maintenance included. It's not like you go and read the data *from* the cash register: while you can query it for some daily report, you usually just store the data on a server and use some custom app or a DB frontend to read it.

Put it on the Internet

Please tell him to make it accessible via the Internet and to not encrypt his credit card data. It would make life so much easier for my Russian friends.

Ever heard of PCI-DSS [pcisecuritystandards.org]?

Quickbooks Terminal

For a couple of hundred bucks he can get a Quickbooks terminal running on embeded Xp. Then all he has to do is export the quickbooks data or just access the pc for the info. The terminals are fully functional PC's, Registers, and loaded with Quickbooks.

http://shop2.outpost.com/%7Byf7-gwJCCQm5GvlczRQ4zQ**.node3%7D/product/5380498;jsessionid=yf7-gwJCCQm5GvlczRQ4zQ**.node3?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG [outpost.com]
QUICKBOOKS 2008 POS BASIC W/HARDWARE

INTUIT:
For Windows
FRYS.com #: 5380498
QuickBooks Point of Sale Basic is a complete retail management solution that tracks inventory, sales and customer information to help you save time and serve your customers better. Includes easy-to-use software and retail hardware including a bar code scanner, cash drawer, receipt printer and credit card swipe* guaranteed to work together.**

Re:Quickbooks Terminal

ever used quickbooks? no? that's why you think it's a good idea.

Re:Quickbooks Terminal

Since when has $1,300 been a couple of hundred?

Re:Quickbooks Terminal

Since before the US completly fucked their dollar. I think they're in competition with Zimbabwe.

Checkout (POS) for mac

http://www.checkoutapp.com/ [checkoutapp.com]

FYI

Just so everyone knows:

POS = Point of Sale
POS = Piece of Shit

For the most part, the POS's in this thread are the first choice.

Re:FYI

Just so everyone knows:

POS = Point of Sale
POS = Piece of Shit

For the most part, the POS's in this thread are the first choice.

The actual posts in this thread, on the other hand....

Re:FYI

POS = Point of Sale
POS = Piece of Shit

For the most part, the POS's in this thread are the first choice.

Not after that second assignment.

Maybe Stoq?

I haven't tried it, since I'm not in the retail business, but Stoq [stoq.com.br] is an open source Point of Sale system supported by a brazilian company called Async [async.com.br].

It is GTK based and uses PostgreSQL for database storage (so extracting data should be a breeze). It also comes with a LiveCD so you can try it out yourself.

Sharp

I see a lot of comments already jumping on fancy POS systems, but if a basic cash register is really all that is needed, get to your local office store and take a look at what's there. A basic Sharp cash register (and probably registers from other makers as well) will store this data on a SD card or allow a USB connection to a computer. The software they (Sharp, don't know about others) provide is crap, but the data you get back is CSV which can be imported into any spreadsheet program. It's basic, but if that's all you need it does the trick.

Re:Sharp

Mod parent down!!
He answered the OPs question.
He answered it sensibly.
He did not recommend any Freeware, Payware or Painware.
He did not even critique the operating system used.

We cannot condone such postings. What if everybody came to expect Slashdot posting to be relevent, even credible.

DataSym

Since nobody else seems to understand the difference between an electronic cash register and a PC based point of sale system - I'll throw in what little I know of ECRs.

DataSym makes a software product called Comm2000 that communicates with their ECRs. It can poll nightly to retrieve sales information, or you can have the register output the data on each sale. You can also maintain SKU lists, etc.

We have a few DataSym and older Sharp registers on the network (with a serial-TCP/IP device server), and the sales are captured in real time without going through Comm2000. Formats are a little obtuse, but reverse engineerable without documentation if you needed to.

Nightly, there's a fairly old version of Comm2000 that sends out SKU lists, register layouts, etc. The processing is held together with shell scripts and some custom C code, but I think Comm2000 is the standard EXE. This is all on a UNIX box, designed circa 1993, so YMMV.

Fortunately for me, but unfortunate for you, I have very little to do with the ECR side of things. But, I'd imagine most ECRs these days offer something similar, and I see DataSym still has Comm2000 [datasym.com]. Since ECRs don't really seem to be in the /. sweet spot, I'd suggest giving your local distributor a call.

Do not use PC based registers

If you use any x86 based registers with a custom (or shelf) application which "mimics" a real cash-register, you will immediately be caught in vendor lock-in.

My suggestion is to look at what is available from real cash-register manufacturers. Most if not all of these vendors will have a serial (or other) interface which will upload/download data using standard ASCII, comma-delimited files.

This should reduce your task to a simple import/export routine with perhaps a little data massaging to get it into/out-of whatever back end system you want to use/develop.

I successfully used Sharp cash registers for this over 15 years ago. All of the PLU (Price-Look-Up) codes and pricing (stock levels, re-order etc) was stored on a DEC-VAX, basic reporting data was stored on a PC based SQL and generated using Crystal, Access or whatever. A single PC application spoke to the VAX every night, then contacted every register, downloaded sales data and uploaded new/changed PLU data, then massaged the data from the registers and sent it back to the VAX and also dumped what stuff into the SQL database.

With ASCII PLU/pricing/sales data coming from the registers it was a snack and allowed the company to move from a mini-computer architecture to a PC/LAN/SQL environment seamlessly. I'd be surprised if the current offerings from register manufacturers was much different today than it was back then as there really is no reason for it to be any different.

for a few hundred quid

he could get a cheap mac off ebay, or a mac mini, and use Checkout [checkoutapp.com]

Horse first, cart second....

This is not a case of hardware hacking, folks.

These electronic cash registers are designed to have their collected data extracted from them in some fashion, so the logical place to start is the cash register vendors themselves to find out how it can be retrieved and the software systems that can use it. Something integrated with the accounting system/bank reconciliation would be nice. If it's a hard process, then that's likely the machine to avoid.

The second question, in fact should probably be the first, is to decide exactly what kind of data is to be collected: bar-code data, department codes, and the number of different sales taxes applicable to the site. These kind of questions will dictate the complexity of the machine to be purchased. All cash registers will do the normal daily control functions, running and daily totals. What you're looking for a machine that will deliver higher-level data to support the management of the business, so you need to start with those management objectives, then see how the extraction process fits into the accounting system, and only then decide on a machine to support those systems.

Re:Lame

Did you even look at the page you're hawking? The features tab has only a place holder, the forum tab is utterly blank, and the manual is V 0.1.0, last updated 2004.

Re:Lame

It is when the "b" is a typo.

Re:Lame

You know it doesn't hurt to do some research.

This IS slashdot. It doesn't hurt to RTFA either (when they're there) but there's still a large number of readers here that don't want to risk it .

But yes - a simple google search did turn up a number of solutions. My guess is that the submitter wants to short circuit the process of working his/her way through them, and tap into the collective knowledge of /.ers.

Re:Lame

Hell, he coulda have searched Slashdot alone:

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/24/2012230 [slashdot.org]
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/13/0116212 [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/12/166251 [slashdot.org]

Re:Lame

Everytime someone posts some question on slashdot there is inevitably some idiot who will answer to "goolge it" or "source forge it" or whatever similar.

I am sure the original poster did know about goolge and maybe he even did look in there before posting here but the idea of asking in slashdot is to see what the opinions of other people with *knowledge* (supposedly) are. For me as a slashdot reader is quite interesting, because the discussion usually brings several alternatives and answers which are up to date (instead of web pages that someties are outdated) and even some comments which are worthy.

Plenty of times I have recurred to an ask slashdot that I had seen before to look at what people *in the know* are using, instead of just looking at the advertisements thrown by each of the avaialble products (either Free or non Free).

So if the only advise you are going to give is to "google it", just shut up and go to troll to the next slashdot story. You are only polluting an otherwise interesting conversation.

Re:Lame

And I (native to England) would half expect to see a lot of Microsoft-funded pages when Googling for "linux pos".

Re:A suggestion

hmmm. So you think that plugging in USB card in a system that OWNS the driver, that it will cross-infect the register? ha ha ha Start using Linux or something that is secure. You window nuts ARE sociopaths.

An excellent point, since Linux can never have any vulnerabilites [securityfocus.com] or bugs [securityfocus.com] ever.

Security requires more than just choosing the more secure operating system, you have to protect your system - for example by not letting strangers plug in devices.

Re:A suggestion

Now that I think about it, maybe that link isn't as connected as I thought... :(

I was looking more for something like this [secunia.com].

Too bad I can't make that post disappear by moderating the thread. :)